Dumitru and Anna Feica are the ancestors all the current branches of the Feica family have in common.  For some of us they are grandparents, for others, great grandparents through your mother or father.  They are pictured at the right in 1946 with their son Jack. The picture was taken at their home in Edmonton where they retired in the 1940s  after living on farms in Boian, Alberta and Kayville, Saskatchewan.

A BRIEF HISTORY:

Dumitru Feica was born in Boian, Bukovina in Romania in 1866. At that time the village and, in fact, Romania, was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were Toader (Theodore) and Illeana (Elena or Elaine)  Fiica. That was the spelling of the name on a copy of his birth certificate. Fiica, by the way, is the Romanian word for daughter. 

Anna was born Anna Lazar (or Lazur) in Boian in 1872. Both Anna and Dumitru were orphaned at a relatively young age by "The Plague," which had swept through eastern Europe in the late 19th century. The plague was actually a cholera epidemic which killed hundreds of thousands of people.  It's not known under what circumstances they met, but they did marry in 1891. Their first child, Mary, was born on Oct. 14, 1892. Their second child, Elena, the survivor of twins, was born March 25, 1895. Another child was born, but died a short time after birth. A son, George, was born May 24, 1897. As far as is known, Dumitru and Anna  farmed a piece of  land for a boyer (a Romanian landowner) and it's said Dumitru and his older brother John also ran the equivalent of a country store and also a sawmill in which they produced lumber. Again, much of this is still speculation since documenation is very difficult to obtain and memories of relatives who are still in that village are somewhat cloudy, confused and imcomplete. It is known that Dumitru and Anna, along with scores of villagers, did accept an offer made by an agent of the Canadian railroad to emigrate to Canada in 1899. They were to be settlers in the western region of the country near Fort Edmonton. Alberta was not yet a province. The offer was that for $10 an emigre could gain access to about 160 acres of farmland with the proviso that over a period of five years they begin to clear the land, build a homestead and produce crops of some sort. Dumitru, Anna and their three young children made their way to Germany where they boarded a steamer, believed to be the SS. Bremen , in the spring of 1899 and sailed to Halifax. From Halifax they boarded a train which brought them to Fort Edmonton. From there, they made their way about 60 miles northeast to the area where the homesteads were located. It was in the Dejarlais region of what would be the Province of Alberta. The settlers in that area named that section Boian, after their home village.    

The newly arrived family, as other new settlers, set about creating a shelter known as a bordei, a covered dug-out or a mud hut. This was a temporary house until trees could be felled and work could begin on erecting a log house. The family continued to grow with the arrival of Ioana, also known as Jennie, in 1900. A daughter, Katie was born in 1901 son, Jack, was born in 1903, followed by Tom, Patrick, Pakitsa (or Pearl who died as a child from influenza), then Violet, Louis and Stephen, the last child, born in 1918. There were also at least two other children who were stillborn or died shortly after birth.

 Dumitru formally applied for the homestead on August 20, 1901 and began the process of setting up his farm and clearing the land. In March of 1902 he finished building the family's first home, a 16' by 26' log cabin. He had also cleared four acres of land, had built a chicken coop and had acquired three head of cattle. The family had officially become settlers.